Sunday, May 31, 2009

Kingdom Come.



Yea, apparently LeBron even witnessed this. Like I told my brother, he may be on his way to becoming the Donovan McNabb of the NBA.

7 comments:

Patrick said...

please expand on that last thought!

bding7 said...

before i begin, there are some problem with that statement (donovan was not the most talented member of his draft class, for one). but, to me, early in their careers, they are both asked to put their teams on their back with their amazing natural gifts with little to no help (think about the eagles earlier this decade: torrance small and charles johnson)? both have taken their teams deep in the playoffs multiple times only to be met with tremendous disappointment.

i could and should probably expand even more, but that's all i can think of for now. on a separate note, it is amazing how quickly it seems people have forgotten about the cavs getting swept in the finals only two years ago. even lebron, with his "come on, guys, i'm a winner" statement. he's 6 years removed from high school, the last time he won anything of importance. in hindsight, none of us should be too surprised. defense and a presence inside win it all, not a 2 or 3 who, as the free darko guys might put it, is perfect at his position.

Asher said...

Yeah, except LeBron's easily one of the two best players in the league, most talented player of his generation, whereas McNabb was maybe a top 4 or 5 quarterback, so, you know, his case isn't nearly as tragic or notable. Maybe a closer analogy is the Jim Kelly or Sergio Garcia of the NBA... or the T-Mac of now. In any event, I'm of the opinion that all LeBron really needs is a complementary player of the order of a David West to spread the load a little, maybe a deadeye shooter or two.

bding7 said...

I don't know about the T-Mac comparison, although I really like the Sergio view. You're right about what the Cavs need, an athletic big man would be a big help.

Watching the ECF and particularly Mo Williams, it has become clear to me how a statistic like PPG is not reliable at all since it tells nothing of the distribution of those points. Something for the Cavs' front office to consider while they look to make moves this summer?

Asher said...

Well, Mo put up pretty great numbers in Milwaukee his last season (17 PPG, 48% from the field, 38.5% from three), and he was nearly as efficient this year in Cleveland. Certainly not your ideal No. 2 guy, but can't we give him the benefit of the doubt and say he might have just had a bad series, in his first real playoff of any importance?

bding7 said...

you're right, he did have a bad series shooting 37% (37.5% from 3pt). but the conference finals was his best series from a scoring perspective (18 a game), so clearly the ppg and fg% are not accurate descriptors of how he played. if you watch the games again, or listen to the post-game interviews, a lot of his points/shots came in the first half, with interspersed buckets later (games 2 and 5 are different).

my point is less about mo and more about how we analyze a player's effectiveness. without a sense of variation, an avg isn't too useful. mo williams just happened to be a useful example of this point.

Asher said...

Eh, the first half matters too. Believe me, these days there are all the advanced stats in the world, only casual fans think much about ppg anymore. But as far as splits by quarter or half go (or by inning in baseball), I've never really seen the point. For example, Sacramento may have gone farther if Webber had been a better fourth quarter player, but if Webber had been more effective in the fourth at the expense of the first, the outcomes would be identical. And back to Mo, one reason he doesn't score late is because his coach likes LeBron to take virtually every fourth-quarter shot.